> The practical purpose of marriage is to give protections to the woman who bears a greater liability in childbearing.
Got a cite for that? If protection of childbearing women were such a great concern, wouldn't we expect societies to have historically provided much more protection to children born by non-married women, too? Yet historically when the Lord diddled the maid, neither the maid nor her bastard received any protection at all. Why single out married women to receive protection?
It seems far more likely to me that marriage was to provide a stable framework upon which to build a predictable system of inheritance of land. When the Lord dies, you really want to have a clear transfer of ownership, for the good of the estate and the commoners who depend on it.
Got a cite for that? If protection of childbearing women were such a great concern, wouldn't we expect societies to have historically provided much more protection to children born by non-married women, too? Yet historically when the Lord diddled the maid, neither the maid nor her bastard received any protection at all. Why single out married women to receive protection?
It seems far more likely to me that marriage was to provide a stable framework upon which to build a predictable system of inheritance of land. When the Lord dies, you really want to have a clear transfer of ownership, for the good of the estate and the commoners who depend on it.